Is The Israel Museum Open On Shabbat?

Israel Museum and many other popular museums in Jerusalem, like the Bloomfield Science Museum, are open on Shabbat. Its opening hours on Saturday are 10:00 - 16:00.

Where Are The Dead Sea Scrolls Today?

The Dead Sea Scrolls are inside the Shrine Of The Book in the Israel Museum complex. And if you want to learn more about the scrolls, you should visit them. But keep in mind that you will see only one original page.

How Old Are Dead Sea Scrolls?

The scrolls are approximately two thousand years old, dating from the third century BCE to the first century CE.

How Large Is the Israel Museum? How Much Time Does A Standard Visit Take?

Israel Museum is quite big, and a typical visit will take a half-day to a full day, depending on the areas you visit. And if we use big data, Google says, "People typically spend up to 3 hours here."

Israel Museum, Jerusalem - Visitors Guide

The Israel Museum, Israel’s national museum, includes an archaeology wing, a Jewish Art and Life exhibition, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and more.

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Note: see 15 Best Museums in Jerusalem for additional information about museums.

Opening Hours

Sunday, Wednesday: Closed
Monday, Thursday: 10:00 – 16:00
Tuesday: 16:00 – 21:00
Friday: 10:00 – 14:00
Saturday: 10:00 – 16:00

Entrance Fee

Adult: 62 NIS.
Child (5 – 17 years old): 31 NIS (free entrance for kids on Tuesday and Saturday).
Student: 45 NIS.
You purchase tickets on the official site or at the cash register at the entrance.

The entrance ticket price includes an audio guide (available in different languages). You can also download an audio guide app. There are free guided tours occasionally, but we will get to them a little later.

Note: opening hours and ticket prices were updated in November 2024. In any case, recheck the official site before visiting.

Coupons

Here is the list of currently available coupons:

Max credit card – starting from 39 NIS per person.
Cal credit card – 39 NIS per adult and 22 NIS per child.
Pais – 39 NIS per adult and 25 NIS per child.
HTZone – starting from 15 NIS per person.
Mega – 37 NIS per adult and 23 NIS per child.

Guided Tours

The museum offers a range of guided tours. Most, if not all, are free to join. You need to be in the right place at the right time. You can ask for additional guidance at the entrance.

There are usually two types of tours: tours dedicated to a specific wing and highlights tours. The tours are in various languages, including Hebrew, English, Spanish, French, and Russian. To see the updated timetable, visit the official site.

Map

Israel Museum is located at Derech Ruppin 11, Jerusalem.

Directions for drivers: Link to Waze and Link to Google Maps
Directions for public transport: Link to Moovit

Group: View Trip Help

Interactive map of the area:

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Israel Museum is the biggest museum in Israel. According to the list of largest museums in the world (by floor area), it is in fifteenth place. You can easily spend a whole day there. Here is the plan for the complex:

The entrance is in the bottom left corner (next to the arrow and #1). Then, you can see the galleries (orange, blue, turquoise, and purple). In the bottom part, you can see the park with sculptures, the Shrine of the Book (#16 and #17), and the Second Temple Model (#19).

Parking

There is a free parking lot by the museum’s entrance. You will find a spot if you arrive during the first half hour after the museum opens. However, during one of our visits, we arrived later in the day, and it was full. We had to park near the museum’s rear entrance (Nakhman Avigad and Avraham Granot Streets). That added a 10-15-minute walk.

Events

The museum offers family activities, special events, gallery talks, and more. Most are in Hebrew and English and cost extra. The updated event list is here.

Exhibitions

This section will review the exhibitions we saw on one of our visits.

A Brief History Of Humankind

The first temporary exhibition we saw in the Israel Museum was “A Brief History of Humankind.”

Color palette — A Brief History of Humankind

Here is what they say about it on the official site:

This exhibition, inspired by Yuval Noah Harari’s bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, invites the public to a journey exploring some of the crucial moments in the history of humankind through pivotal objects from the Museum’s encyclopedic collections. Spanning a timeline of hundreds of thousands of years, the items on view include archaeological objects dating to the dawn of civilization shown side-by-side with cutting-edge works of contemporary art.

The exhibition’s narrative, articulated as three major chapters, revolves around three significant turning points in the evolution of human civilization. The Cognitive Revolution — the advent of language and communication, which enabled Homo sapiens to survive and form complex societies. The Agricultural Revolution — humanity’s first steps towards the evolution of settled civilization, laying the foundations for modern society. And the Industrial Revolution — a time of rapid scientific and technological developments that ushered in the contemporary era.

“A Brief History of Humankind” discusses life and starts with fire.

The creation of the family was a vital step in the evolution, and globalization is currently the last step.